A Star Shall Fall

Delphia came forward, hands rising and then hesitating. But there was no one in the Hall of Figures save they two, and so she went on as she had begun, wrapping her arms around his stiff body and laying her cheek along his. After a moment Galen uncrossed his own arms and laid his hands on her waist, feeling the rigid armour of her stays. Irrith rarely wore any—a comparison he should not be making, not when Delphia would be his wife.

“I don’t understand everything you’ve said,” she murmured. “Comets and Dragons and all of that. But I’m sure it will be all right.”

Meaningless words. As she admitted, she had no understanding of the circumstances—the Dragon’s power, the details of their plan, any of it. Still, he needed to hear that assurance, empty though it was.

I’m sure it will be all right.

Galen disengaged from her embrace, forcing himself to concentrate upon her face, and not the fiery memorial behind. “Thank you. Now come; there are more—and more pleasant—parts of the Onyx Hall to see.”

THE ONYX HALL, LONDON

25 December 1758

On certain days—May Day, Midsummer, All Hallows’ Eve—the fae went out into the mortal world to uphold their ancient traditions.

During the Christmas season, they stayed below.

Deprived of Galen’s company, and bored as a result, Irrith went to the night garden. There she passed the day playing increasingly absurd dice games with Ktistes, sprite and centaur taking turns to add a new rule with every new round. They threw the dice upon the polished boards of his pavilion, chatting upon inconsequential subjects with determined carelessness, until Irrith, rising to stretch, caught sight of something outside.

A holly nymph, spirit of one of the garden’s trees, stood on the dewed grass with her head tilted back, staring upward.

“What is it?” Ktistes asked. Irrith didn’t answer; by then, her feet were already carrying her down the ramp and onto the grass, into open space where she could see the ceiling above.

A comet blazed across the night garden.

The faerie lights that formed its sky had drawn inward, leaving most of the ceiling black and empty. The tail of the comet pierced that blackness like a sword, trailing back from a core of brightness too painful to look at directly. It stretched nearly from one side of the garden to the other, a radiant omen of doom.

The knocking of Ktistes’s hooves against the wood sounded hollow as death behind Irrith. Then the centaur was there, and she put one hand against his flank, needing the support.

“Someone has seen it,” he whispered—a tiny sound, coming from so great a body. “We must find out who.”

Does it matter? Irrith wondered. Her muscles were wound so tight she thought her bones might snap. We are out of time.

The comet—and the Dragon it carried—had returned.

PART SIX DISSOLUTIO Winter 1759

Substance and form in me are but a name,

For neither of the two I rightly claim,
A spirit less, and yet such force enjoy,
As all material beings shall destroy.

“A RIDDLE,”

ATTRIBUTED TO ELIZABETH CARTER,

THE GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE

, NOVEMBER 1734

Distance shrinks to nothing at the touch of eyes. A man in a night-black field, peering up at the sky, seeing its wonders magnified beyond their natural size.

Seeing the comet.

The Dragon coils within its prison. Its being is light, part of the growing brilliance that shrouds the comet’s dark core. Matter could not leap the distance between this traveller and that night-dark field, but light can, light does.

Freedom awaits.

Freedom, yes—but little more. There is no power there. Grass, and trees, and the man with the watching eyes; these things could be burnt, and there would be joy in that.

The Dragon wants more than joy.

It wants the city, and the shadow beneath it.